


and the slithy toves

by qinzai



Category: The Checquy Files - Daniel O'Malley, The Rook (TV 2019), The Rook - Starz
Genre: Other, i just started and i couldn't stop, no sexy times yet i'm gathering up the courage, nobody knows!, round and round this goes, where it stops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-13 20:16:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20180098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qinzai/pseuds/qinzai
Summary: a dream is NOT always a wish your heart makes sometimes, sometimes it is just a dream...and sometimes it is something that causes a series of bad events that make a mystery puzzle for Gestalt and Myfanwy, set a couple of years in the future when everything is just fine and nobody's currently sad or mad or anything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i woke up today going: tv canon Myfanwy slept with Robert body only is my hypothesis, i just have a feeling, but i kind of hope i'm wrong... i should write that night before it's released, make my own canon
> 
> but then i became a little coward and wrote something entirely different instead. 
> 
> more to come.

“Did you want to see it?” Ingrid asked in that quiet, pursed-mouth caring way of hers. “Did you want to make the world burn?”

“No need to be rude,” they parroted back at her while they ran down the streets to the river, clutching a bucket with a hole in the bottom. She was keeping pace beside them in the shape of a wide-eyed bat and they only had one body and it was a dream, a terrible dream, the worst kind of dream when they were trapped like that. When they could only reach out two hands at most to the people falling and shrieking around them who then learned how to fly, who followed them asking questions that would have earned them stony silence in the light of day. 

“This is your fault, aniołek. You made this with your anger.”

“I don’t have anger!” They snarled, although they couldn’t be sure they said it out loud. Bat-Ingrid didn’t react, anyway, flapping in unison with a bat that was silent but stared with the face of a young schoolboy, some shit from their past they’d already forgotten the details of. 

“What better way to show you are better than everyone else?” the bats hissed.

“Gestalt,” came a stern warning from the flames, taken up and echoed by the buildings, by the water, by the hollowed-out cars crashed into poles. Each call became more and more harsh, the ‘G’ thicker, the ‘st’ spat, the ‘alt’ swallowed.

“Gestalt. Gestalt. Gestalt.”

“Gestalt,” rang out a soft voice, clear and beautiful as a bell, and they sat up with a start, all eight eyes snapping to Myfanwy as she sat across from them at the table, her hands grasping two of Gestalt’s. 

“It’s past midnight. You don’t need to be sleeping here,” she said in a soothing tone. Gestalt tried to match that by using ‘Eliza’’s mouth to reply, even as all four heads gave her a gentle smile. They had learned early on that people responded to that body the best, including Myfanwy. 

“Didn’t mean to close my eyes,” they said. In the black of the rest of the office, only the blue light of their four laptops and a yellow hallway light that peeked around the corner lit the five figures up. That was good. That was how it had been as they last remembered it, which meant only Myfanwy had been witness to their slip-up. 

“Sure you didn’t,” she said sardonically, and patted their hands, her ring clinking against the one that ‘Alex’ wore. They couldn’t help but reach with their other left hands over to cover her smaller one. Every time they did, they were so thankful she didn’t pull away. She hadn’t pulled away for a long time, but they carried that doubt in their hearts. 

“Whatever you were working on, it can be left until tomorrow. I assure you,” Myfanwy said, rising to her feet, and the moment was broken in favor of clearing out. With half a mind - not literally - Gestalt gathered up their things and tucked them away in bags, ducking out of the conference room to stow the devices in their laptop with two bodies while gathering their coats with another. They were grateful that they could do all of that, and still hold Myfanwy’s hand, still look into her eyes. 

“You say that now, only because you -” They blinked. “What are you still doing here? I thought you went home hours ago.”

“I did,” Myfanwy shrugged, unashamed to be caught. “Even fell asleep and everything, but then you weren’t there.” Gestalt had noticed how her normally-perfect outfit had taken a few wrinkles, assuming it was the use of the day, but now that they saw from the side and the behind as they walked out of the office, the wrinkles were more of a ‘put in hamper and taken out again’ sort. “I think that probably contributed to my bad dream.”

They stopped with all four bodies and spun her to face them. 

“What kind of bad dream, Myfanwy?” They demanded. She reached up to stroke their cheek, feeling the stubble. 

“It’s not important, is it? Just missed you.” 

“Of course it’s important.”

“Why?” she shot back, dropping her hand and leaning back. They spun on their heels and walked in silence to the car and did not speak again until they were on the road, Myfanwy solidly fit in the middle in the back seat. 

“I had a bad dream, too,” they said in a whisper from the body on her left, running their fingers through that head’s slicked hair. “When I was involuntarily asleep.” 

“Involun-” she began, but they cut her off from exploring that more. 

“So what kind of bad dream did you have?” they asked from her other side, in the voice trained to slither along the same accent as the one on her left. They turned to look at her with both heads, pinning her with their gazes. 

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t mind any more. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t fold up, raising her hackles and baring her teeth. But she did.

“It doesn’t matter,” she emphasized. “It was old, from years ago, just repeated. Just shitty teenage fears.”

They clenched a jaw. Could theirs be considered a ‘shitty teenage fear’? They hadn’t known Ingrid, then, and the abstraction of the dream annoyed them. As always, it seemed Myfanwy’s paths had side roads they couldn’t always share with her. 

“And yours?” She said, almost distantly, just to make conversation.

“It doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t be sleeping in the office, anyway.” It wasn’t nothing, but they were turning it over in their heads, trying to decide if it did matter, after all. 

Two people having a bad dream didn’t have to be a sign of the end times. It wasn’t as if the dreams were simultaneous, so there could very well be no connection. Work was going as smoothly as it usually did, no unknown EVAs there to provide a missing factor. No Checquy agent had a listed EVA of dream manipulation, or projection, or anything related to that at all. 

Myfanwy tsked, shaking her head. 

“I thought we were over this,” she said. 

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Gestalt amended. “Right now I just want to get home and sleep properly, okay?” They gave her a smile, a ‘set the locals at ease’ smile through the rearview mirror. 

She seemed to accept the change in conversation and smiled back, shoulders relaxing. 

“How properly?” She teased, and leaned on ‘Alex’, pressing up against Gestalt in a manner that clearly demonstrated her intentions to not get much sleep at all. They grinned back at her, more wild than the other smile, bending down to press a chaste kiss to her lips. 

“Don’t make me crash again,” purred Gestalt from the throat on the other side of her. 

“It’s not a work car, is it?” She replied without breaking eye contact. 

“Doesn’t mean crashing won’t have unintended consequences we might not like,” is all they could muster, pressing down on the gas pedal to get back faster while they tried to keep their breathing even and their head clear as they kissed her again, much less chaste this time. 

It didn’t work - they really weren’t able to focus half as well with her near, not since they had begun their relationship for real. At work it was doable, the glass walls and the job to do giving them enough motivation to not think about her, a shield to protect themself from her effect, but outside of that was all fair game. 

Something else brought their amorous advances, only just begun with a hand on her back and another on her arm to a screeching halt. Well, their advances, and the car. 

It was past midnight, but the road was full of cars at a standstill, none of them parked evenly. It looked like they had all just rolled to a stop. Some smoke rose ahead, in the distance, and the wail of police sirens sounded, but it was from far away. 

“This can’t be good,” they muttered, distangling themself from where they had wrapped around Myfanwy even tighter to protect her from the jolt of the stopping car. Despite their exhaustion, neither Gestalt nor Myfanwy let their guard down as they exited the car, eyes alert and scanning for possible reasons. 

Well, it wasn’t so hard to find. Gestalt gathered around the hood of the car in front of them, looking at the driver whose face was spasming, twisting in horror and anger. His eyes were closed and his posture was slack, the same as the woman in the seat next to him. 

This time, Myfanwy didn’t even try to make them stop biting their nails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also... how do i tag this in the 'categories' thing.. so suprised AO3 doesn't have the option for me to say it's someone who uses they pronouns and someone who uses she/her... what's up with that
> 
> this isn't in the 'unity' collection bc i've decided to try my hand at actual plot. I couldn't tell you the last time that was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the gyre begins... or ends?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hand slipped and i wrote this chapter as I procrastinated a little bit, and we're now in Myfanwy's POV. She's not as great at Gestalt's pronouns as they are (well, she's not them, so) I think probably they don't mind so much since most of their life is making other people comfortable with their very existence.

It was the work of a couple minutes for Gestalt to walk up and down the cars, verifying that all of the drivers were sound asleep, while trying to wake the first pair up. The siblings, which it was clear that they were, did not wake as easily as Gestalt had for Myfanwy. That had been the work of moments, although they had been long, dramatic ones, the way their faces were wrought in sneering fear. She hadn’t mentioned it because sometimes they made faces at night, regardless of what they were dreaming. It came with the requirement that sleep meant letting their guard down, letting go of the act. 

This seemed to be a little more on the suspicious side. 

“It’s a shame we aren’t policemen, there are no night shifts,” she remarked offhandedly. Teddy was nowhere to be seen, but Eliza shot her a look. 

“No deaths or series crashes yet,” she replied, countering the tone. “But we might need to wake up Claudia at the least.”

“Yeah, have you got it?” Myfanwy sighed to herself. Business mode back again. And here she was, ready to get sleep after travelling all the way back to work to get Gestalt. They were so close to their home, too. 

“The sirens aren’t coming any nearer,” came Robert’s quiet voice. 

Myfanwy sighed again. “It’s definitely ours, then?” 

“Definite radius of effect, so yeah,” he replied. Gestalt had their other two heads buried in their technology, finding the epicenter as best they could with the CCTV cameras.

“How far does it go?” she turned to face them, then looked up at the lights around them, half-wishing she could see the stars. 

Gestalt checked their watch. “Three blocks so far, no end in sight.” 

“Literally?”

“It’s dark, Myfanwy.”

She exhaled slowly, leaning into Robert, who put his arm around her as they looked into the red tail lights. For all their claims of the darkness, the red certainly cast an ominous shadow. The color seemed to drown out the white light of the headlights, but perhaps it was just her exhaustion, lending eeriness to the night. “Any theories?”

“No signs of anyone awake. Cars are idling, must have been here for at least ten, twenty minutes.”

“We shouldn’t have been caught in it. You were outside this radius and I was fully awake by then,” she said, doing the math in her head. 

“Which means either it affects EVAs differently, or there have been multiple uses of this EVA within the night. But we didn’t encounter any pileups like this one.”

“Claudia hasn’t answered her phone yet,” said Teddy as he sauntered back into the area, tucking his phone back into his pocket. 

“You’ve got full camera access?” Myfanwy asked, tilting her head in a clear sign that they should all return to the car. No need to be standing out in the cold when they could be doing their work in the relative warmth of the car. Gestalt didn’t immediately follow her in, and she knew they were hesitating because it would mean chipping away at the professionalism at some level. She knew her effect. But she didn’t think about it as often as she perhaps ought to, for all of its strength on them. 

“Working on finding the center still,” came all four voices as Gestalt dove into their devices. 

“No luck yet on seeing anyone walking, much less a target or suspect,” they said, with just Alex’s voice this time. 

“And there’s no pedestrians, either, although that’s not extraordinarily strange,” said Eliza.

Myfanwy closed the car door, and thought. “No homeless people or skulkers, even?”

“None on visible camera,” said Alex again, “but-”

She was turning to look at him, as was still her instinct - as would always be her instinct, since it was honed with everyone else except for Gestalt - when movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. The driver of the car was just waking up, shaking his head to clear the air, and his sister was, too. Neither of them seemed too alarmed or to realize they had been sleeping, for in the next moment, without any hesitation, they began to drive again.

It was possible because, Myfanwy watched, wheels turning in her head, the other drivers had apparently done the same thing. Just woken up, and began to drive again. The road cleared in seconds as the five pairs of eyes took in the sight, and soon enough all five of them were left there, standing outside their car in the middle of the road.

“Well,” she said, turning and getting back in the car. “You have the recordings for later, right?”

“Won’t need later if I find out now,” Teddy and Alex replied as they slid back into the back seat with her, twin faces glowing in their blue lights. Eliza started the car again, with Robert, too, tucked into his phone, but Myfanwy made a face. 

“It’s so late right now,” she muttered, closing her eyes both for patience and to block out the light. She didn’t see them sigh quietly and put their phones - well, Teddy and Alex’s, anyway - back into their pockets. She didn’t see how their eyes softened, just from looking at her. “Update Claudia and Conrad and they can deal with it for now. If you tell them everything, they can handle it until we go in, in the morning.” She could trust they did that, because they were Gestalt and probably had already done so, was just tolerating her saying it because they loved her. 

It was a matter of minutes, now that the weird traffic had cleared, for them to pull into the car park and shuffle their way into their flat, past the doorman and up the elevator. No matter what time it was, no matter their own level of tired, Gestalt would always hang up their coats, plug in their phones, and neatly fold away the clothes they had worn that day, or put them in the laundry if need be. That was part of the reason Myfanwy had liked them from the start, seeing a fellow organized soul. Well, souls, she had thought at the time, but the seed had been planted. 

“Queen Thomas,” Eliza said as she gestured toward the bed, where Alex, Teddy, and Robert were all lying in their white underthings. Even after the long time they had been together, Myfanwy was well aware of how Gestalt was still unable to let some things go, unable to completely disregard how hard they worked to get people to not notice that the four bodies were one person. It still worked on her, to an extent. The three men lay in different poses, although they looked at her with an identical gaze, drank the sight of her in as they did every night. 

With all of the mystery, and a healthy dose of suspicion as to what her sleep would be like, Myfanwy was not entirely sure she wanted to fall asleep, after all. But their earlier mood, inside the car, before any of the discovery happened, was surely done and gone by then. 

“Sorry I missed this earlier tonight,” whispered Eliza as she came up behind her, laying a blanket over her shoulders. Their sleeping arrangement was more than a little difficult, at first. Gestalt kicked off the covers every night, without fail, and Myfanwy shivered in the morning cold. Being between all four of them was a delight, it really was, but it made things terribly inconvenient when Gestalt moved or kicked in the night, or if she wanted to get up and use the restroom. Unlike if she was with four separate people, accidentally nudging one body as she left would wake all four of them up. So Myfanwy slept on one side of the bed, with her own blanket that wouldn’t get removed. 

“Maybe it was a good thing, after all,” she murmured as she lay down, wrapped in Eliza’s arms as the other three pulled their blanket up. “I guess we’ll see.”

Despite her earlier hesitation, she had no problem falling asleep. 

It was the staying asleep that troubled her.


End file.
